


Heart and Head

by bunn



Series: Undying Lands [5]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fourth Age, Gen, Reconciliation, Valinor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28730946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunn/pseuds/bunn
Summary: In a far-off land West of the Moon, East of the Sun, Nimloth of Doriath and Celegorm go roaming in pursuit of dragonflies, but it's not quite as easy to think only of the interests they share as Nimloth would like.
Relationships: Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Nimloth of Doriath
Series: Undying Lands [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1340299
Comments: 24
Kudos: 106





	Heart and Head

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a series of 100-word and 200-word drabbles for the Silmarillion Writers' Guild instadrabbling session on Discord recently, but they ended up connecting and growing a bit of a plot.

The trees in front of them were laden with small chirping birds, their tufted heads bobbing as they swarmed around the cones. Dark green needles clawed sharp against grey sky, and a sharp scent of cedar filled the cold air. 

Nimloth turned her head a cautious fraction, whispering: “In Doriath we used to call these birds silkytails. But we rarely saw more than one or two, wanderers blown far across the wide ocean. They’re more wary, here, but there are so many more of them.”

Her companion nodded his fair head. “Fruit-thieves. They raid orchards for fruit, and so they are wary of orchard-wardens.” A wry smile at the corner of his mouth. “They think you look suspicious.” 

Nimloth made a face that mingled amusement and indignation. “ _ I _ look suspicious? I, and not Celegorm son of Fëanor? These birds are fools!” 

Her voice became louder as she spoke. All at once the birds took off, a great storm of small wings beating that leaped into the air as one. 

“I’ve learned not to take the twittering words of birds too seriously,” Celegorm told her, with a grin. “Not even nightingales.’

Nimloth rolled her eyes, thinking of Lúthien. Then she laughed. 

##  *****

“Ah, here they are at last!” Nimloth said eagerly. The shining water’s edge and tall reeds were fluttering with brilliant blue wings. Butterflies set down delicately upon her shoulders and her short white hair. 

“Now, these are of far more interest to me than birds. Can you truly speak with them? It seems most unlikely, but I promised Elrond not to dismiss it out of hand...”

She fell silent, for Celegorm was moving, swirling into a dance of wide-winged fluttering that mirrored the small silent wings. In answer the butterflies lifted and swirled around him, each one answering his movement.

##  *****

The lake was calm, glittering in the sunlight. Great lily-pads floated there, reds and greens more brilliant than any that had shone upon the Meres of Twilight at home.

A small bird, long-legged and earnest was pecking its way across the pads, and they watched it for a while, side by side, unspeaking. They had been travelling together for some days, by now, and had spoken of little but birds and insects, the growth of trees, the movement of the waters. Matters of consuming interest to both of them... and yet...

The silence had become warm and heavy, filled with the gentle buzzing of bees. ““Did you ever visit the Twilight Meres? In those long years of peace after the Sun rose, when your brothers hunted near the Andram Wall?” 

He was looking down into the clear water, not meeting her eyes. “Now and again. Good hunting for duck, in the marshes of the upper Sirion, as long as you kept clear of the Girdle of Melian.” 

“I took my boys there once,” she said, although she had not intended to admit to anything so painful, not to him, of all people. “That last summer. They were five years old.”

##  *****

Nimloth and Celegorm wandered, unspeaking, along the lakeshore and through the hills, seeking the dragonflies that haunted the shallow winding stream that led down from the great lake to the sea. But they saw none.

Instead, beside them, near tangible in the bitterness of shared thought, walked twin boys, dark-haired, grey-eyed, calmly, hand in hand, or running along the stream, chasing the tumbling water. 

At last the stream ran onto open sands, and the half-seen children of memory ran ahead, splashing water that was not the Open Sea. 

Across the bitter salt water of the now sailed tall globes, purple-red with translucent sails and trailing arms, poison-filled. 

But in Nimloth’s memory, too clear and sharp to banish, the children lifted wooden cups brimming bright with water from the shining pools, and drank their fill. 

“What do you want of me?” Celegorm demanded at last, his face twisted as he watched the children playing. “Is this a punishment, is that it? You’d have me stung by conscience?”

Nimloth shook her head, watching the wind take the purple sails and carry all that strange and dangerous fleet out, further into open water. “My grief is not to punish you. It’s mine, not yours.”

*****

“I hoped to mend our quarrels, when I asked you to come hunting dragonflies,” Nimloth said. Celegorm stood poised, wary, on the edge of a bright sea. Behind him, half-seen, half-felt, were great stone walls and arches, the defences of Beleriand, long-lost, looming dark from his memories.

She ignored them, addressing only the elf whose fair hair streamed in the wind, and not the faint fears and fortresses about him. “You fought our enemies for us, until at last you became them. I think we might have changed that, if we’d met sooner. There’s no  _ point _ hanging onto grief for things that can’t be changed.” 

Celegorm pointed to the silent children, racing fleet across the sands but leaving no footmarks. “No logical point, perhaps. My Oath is no more, Doriath is lost under waves, and the Silmaril that Dior wore is a star seen by many and secure from all evil; we all agreed on that. But does your heart believe it?”

Nimloth frowned. “The heart is a useful organ, but I don’t like letting it tell me what I should think.”

Celegorm’s eyes widened. Then he smiled. “You _ are _ remarkable,” he said. “I truly wish I’d met you sooner.”

*****

Heavy purple clouds were moving westward, laden with rain. The wind was freshening, and the waves hurrying to the shore sent up a fine salt-scented spray. Nimloth pulled a cloak from her pack and wrapped it close around her. “Everyone says that I’m remarkable. That’s nothing new. But I had not previously thought of myself as, above all, a mother. That’s new, and odd. My daughter is long grown, my sons are gone, so brief I barely knew them... and here I am still, it seems, their mother. It would be sensible to set that aside: it changes nothing now, and there’s much to be gained from setting it aside. And yet...there they are. They haunt my heart when I speak with you. I don’t know what to make of it.” 

Celegorm regarded her with troubled steel-grey eyes. The veneer of confidence, of utter surety in all that he and all his house had done was gone, here alone on the empty beach, with only the woman he had killed to see him. “There is no need to force yourself to talk to me,” he said. “Aman is a big place. We need never see each other again.” 

Nimloth laughed, and hearing the bitter edge to it, cut the laugh off. “You’d like that, would you? You prefer to live without thinking of what you did to me, or of my children?”

“That’s not my choice,” Celegorm told her. He turned away, shoulders hunched against the wind that pulled at his shirt and began to walk away.

“Celegorm.” Her voice cut through the sound of wind and waves. He flinched, and then turned, grim-faced, as if facing an enemy. “I am no coward. Nor are you. We have that in common, and a great deal else.” 

“What do you want?” he demanded. 

“I want to walk with you, and with my memories, and yours,” she said, and every word felt harsh as coarse sand. “At least, until I understand my heart. You owe me this.”

He shook his golden head, impatient, and the shadow of orc-armies marching across Beleriand, of high towers and stone walls echoed behind him once again. “I owe you nothing.” He smiled then, deliberate and determined. “But if you wish, my lady Nimloth, then I will walk with you, and speak of dragonflies, of birds or butterflies, of old wars, or even of your sons. If you have the courage to do that, then so do I.”

“Come on then,” Nimloth said with an matching impatience and turned to walk back into the shadow of the hills, without looking to see if he was following. 

He was, and as the cloud-shadow fell over them, sending the land around them into rain- shadow, the hills ahead were lit with a sudden glimpse of brilliant sunshine. The rain fell in a silver curtain, but above the two figures walking slowly side by side, a double rainbow shone. 


End file.
